song meanings

278. Waylon Jennings Live!

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

Waylon Jennings has no idea what’s happening in one audience member’s mind and what might await them in “Waylon Jennings Live!”

Track: “Waylon Jennings Live!”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

John Darnielle likes to open live shows with a song the crowd won’t know. This show in San Francisco opened with “Any Available Surface” and then was almost entirely in alphabetical order. That song is excellent, but it’s about as obscure as Mountain Goats songs come. This show in Chicago opened with “Waylon Jennings Live!” This is the earliest performance of it I can find and it predates the album, so no one in the audience had ever heard it. You can hear people laugh at lines like “before I got myself this drunk” and you can tell it’s not just new to most of them, but to all of them.

The studio version is excellent, but the live versions make this one shine. I think it’s the best song the Goats have written in many years. That’s not an insult to any other song, this one just really works for me. It feels like a bridge between the characters in early Mountain Goats songs and the instrumentation of the modern band.

I was at that show at the Old Town School of Folk Music in 2018. It’s a really special venue and the person who taped this show really captures that. At the time, this was “Unreleased Waylon Jennings Song” on most of the blogs. A friend of mine got in a heated discussion with someone on Genius about what the name of the Iowa casino in the first line was. It’s Meskwaki and it’s halfway between Des Moines and Iowa City.

Our narrator is at a show and about to take a big risk. The story is easy to follow in the song, but it leaves just enough out to make you wonder. What, exactly, is on these flash drives? Even beyond that, what’s in the suitcase?

277. Sicilian Crest

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle explores the cult of fascism and how people come to it in “Sicilian Crest.”

Track: “Sicilian Crest”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

John Darnielle loves “Sicilian Crest.” He loves the words. He loves the song. He loves everything about it, which is never more clear than on the episode of I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats about the song. The podcast is required listening for anyone who wants to really get into the band and how John Darnielle thinks about his creations, but this episode especially so. He excitedly yells the title over and over, selling it the way you’d have to sell it. It’s a song about getting excited for a really, really bad idea and signing on to something you shouldn’t just because of that enthusiasm.

It’s strange to engage with “Sicilian Crest,” a song about the pervasive nature of fascism, in 2021. It’s only been a few years since John Darnielle wrote it and it already feels so much more urgent. “All the talk we heard was true // the legends we all heard once,” the narrator excitedly tells us. They’re sick of waiting for a hero and they’re ready to believe this one, this time, is the one. They’re ready to look to one man as a savior, even though it’s obviously not a good idea. You don’t need my help to make the connection.

You can understand how this narrator wants to believe “everything’s new” and that this will work. You can understand wanting it, at least, which was John Darnielle’s goal with the song. It’s one of the darkest subjects possible and the grim reality is that there are millions of people who could be singing this song. They believe in a false past and a false dream of a future wrapped up in a cult of personality. You can almost see how you’d get there, as long as the dream was sold with a song.

276. Younger

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

Thirty years of the experience of the Mountain Goats comes to a head in “Younger.”

Track: “Younger”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

I have a lot of love for “Waylon Jennings Live!” but I think “Younger” is probably the best song on In League with Dragons. It’s clever in a way that’s compelling, with at least a half-dozen references to other Mountain Goats songs to unpack. “I saw a face there once before when I was younger,” John Darnielle tells us, referencing a darker, older time from Get Lonely. The power of a reference like this is that it isn’t just something to figure out. It’s not just a line cribbed from another song. It’s a direct statement that we’re further along in the timeline of who John Darnielle is. It’s also a suggestion that times have changed.

John Darnielle wrote hundreds of songs before he started telling his story in them. Surely every piece of art has part of the creator in it, but only the later Mountain Goats albums even suggest that the narrator might be John Darnielle. He’s not the guy in “Going to Georgia” but he is the guy in “Broom People.” That matters a great deal for “Younger.”

Even the riff is based on “No, I Can’t,” a much older song that serves as a list of things that will “fix” someone. We’re more than two decades past that point and in “Younger” we see a character who feels the weight of what they’ve been through. “It never hurts to give thanks to the broken bones you had to use to build your ladder,” they tell us, in a grand telling of what the experience meant. “Younger” is huge and serious, but that’s how you feel when you’re looking back. John Darnielle wants you to engage with the entire thing at once here, which is an extremely tall task that “Younger” accomplishes.

275. An Antidote for Strychnine

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

Poisons and cures are both possible paths in “An Antidote for Strychnine.”

Track: “An Antidote for Strychnine”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

It is not a new observation to say that In League with Dragons is full of self reference. One of the songs is a sequel and most of the songs reference other songs either directly or indirectly. The entire Mountain Goats experience builds upon itself, with characters like Jenny or the Alpha Couple showing up all over the place. John Darnielle playfully put a line on the front cover of All Hail West Texas that seemingly says the exact number of people contained in the songs, as if he wants you to try to do the math if that’s your thing. It’s fun to find the Easter eggs and it’s rewarding to figure something out, even if it only is a meaning you can find yourself.

“An Antidote for Strychnine” is the longest song on In League with Dragons, but I think it may only have one direct reference to a previous song. “I may not ever get free,” plays with the findings of “Never Quite Free,” especially as the next line starts with a quieter, almost hushed, “but I may.” There’s also a mention of lab rats that people think is a call to “Lab Rat Blues,” so maybe there are two.

Six minutes is a very long time to spend in a Mountain Goats song. It’s long enough that the character makes us wonder what they’re doing. It’s insular, lonely work to deal with poison and cures. It’s what you do when you feel like the world has abandoned you. It’s what you do when you’re not sure if you want to get better or not and you need to prepare for both paths.

274. Going Invisible 2

Alex Russell In League with Dragons , , , , , , ,

Burning everything down isn’t always a bad thing, John Darnielle tells us in “Going Invisible 2.”

Track: “Going Invisible 2”
Album: In League with Dragons (2019)

You don’t need me to tell you what a two on the end of a song title means, but it is interesting that not all of them have available prequels. “Insurance Fraud #2” doesn’t have a #1, it’s titled that way because it’s the second take and John Darnielle liked the train sounds so much that he used the second take as the official one. That’s mostly trivia and most of the time the two is meant to show you this is part of a series.

The first “Going Invisible” is an unreleased song from Get Lonely, with lines like “but who’d smile back at a face like that.” John Darnielle sings very high on it, giving a distance and a loneliness to what’s already a sad song, and the character feels right at home on Get Lonely even if it didn’t make the final track list. The sequel borrows even more than the sequel songs usually do. The original chorus talks about breaking something and sweeping the pieces away. The sequel is ready to burn it all down, today, and sweep the ashes away.

“I’m gonna break something” is a small threat. It might be a serious one, but it pales when compared to “I’m gonna burn it all down today.” This is the escalation that comes with time, but it also reflects the different tone of the two albums. Get Lonely can be a difficult listen in the wrong headspace. The characters are dealing with real fear and they’re extremely close to the sources. In League with Dragons is John Darnielle revisiting his entire catalog, and, by extension, his entire life. It’s more palatable in this form. Not better or worse, but a moment that builds to triumphant destruction rather than the despondent kind.

273. Fault Lines

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

John Darnielle’s poetry is center stage in “Fault Lines” as luxury and emotional distress mix.

Track: “Fault Lines”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

Many, many better writers than I have said that John Darnielle is a talented lyricist. It’s the primary hook of the Mountain Goats, if it isn’t the emotion behind everything, and it’s on display all the time. “Fault Lines” is familiar territory for a Mountain Goats song: folks get drunk and avoid their emotional problems. What makes it interesting is the language. From the first line, we have “down here where the heat’s so fine.” It’s a simple construction, but it’s not how you often think of “hot” weather. The first verse wanders through descriptions of expense, but my favorite is “we have our strawberries flown in from England.” I don’t even know if that’s worth it or not, but it certainly conveys a lifestyle.

John Darnielle delivers “Fault Lines” like a shanty. You’ll find yourself bobbing your head to it as he strums and sing-songs the descriptions of wasteful luxury and system damage that this couple experiences. “They don’t make us feel better about who we are,” the narrator says, unnecessarily, but they really hit that fact hard. By the end, after several more descriptions, they tell us that all of this won’t “send our love to its reward down in Hell.” It’s about as intense as it comes, even for a song like this, and we have to stand up and listen.

The juxtaposition of fancy, fine things and disastrously failing love is well drawn. The characters are self aware, but that doesn’t stop them. They still keep piling up debts to try to push off the reality of what they feel. It’s certainly a strategy, but the fact that this won’t change the outcome is clear.

272. The Mess Inside

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

The beautiful “The Mess Inside” refuses to let us down easy as it insists on a sad end.

Track: “The Mess Inside”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Mountain Goats songs about specific places. All of these songs seem to suggest that if a person could just get to another place they could be another person. If not happy, they say, at least different. “The Mess Inside” pays off all of these songs to tell you that is not the case. You’re you, wherever you are, and a change of scenery will not fix it.

“Tried to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things,” is both an all-time lyric and a summation of this idea. “Most of the time I guess I felt all right,” our narrator follows up, and maybe they did. “The Mess Inside” is very clear about the message. This is the story of two people trying four locations to improve their mood and to run from “the mess” of their love. It works until it doesn’t. That’s the story of, conservatively, a hundred Mountain Goats songs.

What makes “The Mess Inside” different is where it falls in the timeline. “I wanted you // to love me like you used to do” is a simple idea, plainly stated. In contrast to “a weekend in Utah won’t fix what’s wrong with us,” however, it becomes a horror story. The die is cast for these two. It’s over, and they know it, and they know this a futile process. That’s not unique for a Mountain Goats couple, but it’s rarely this much of a done deal. This isn’t maybe, this is definite, and you can hear John Darnielle lose hope for his lovers as the story builds to the only conclusion it could ever hope to find.

271. Jeff Davis County Blues

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

“Jeff Davis County Blues” takes a specific route through Texas but offers only a haze of a person’s life.

 

Track: “Jeff Davis County Blues”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

I once drove from El Paso to Fort Stockton, which intersects with the route described in “Jeff Davis County Blues” only briefly, right at the start. A fan made a map of the route here, and it’s interesting to take a look as you listen to the song. It doesn’t really matter where this narrator is driving, but the choice to list it like a map in the song’s lyrics does beg you to view it like one. I was driving this route in 2008 as part of a much larger drive, but I will always remember this part of Texas as even more wide open than Kansas, where we’d just been, and how that surprised me.

Assuming our narrator takes this exact route, they’re driving about five hours and taking a particularly indirect route. “I have no place to go,” they tell us, but they also say they are going to Midland. Over the drive, the narrator seems to decide that home is something they deserve (or at least desire) to come back to, after all. We don’t know why they aren’t there, but we know they spent three days in jail before the song’s events. We don’t know all that much for certain, but we’ve got a lot of clues.

The photographs on the passenger seat are the biggest clue. This is someone who wants what may be lost and they are visualizing it, quite literally. They are going home, but also they say “I hope you won’t mind.” There’s an inkling there, and maybe much more than that, of an idea that this person isn’t welcome in Midland. We don’t know what’s coming next, but we do know that this person’s fears might be justified.

270. Source Decay

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

You can search the postcards in “Source Decay” or you can live in the memory of why they are coming to your house now.

Track: “Source Decay”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

The obvious brother/sister song to “Source Decay” is “Jenny” but it’s at least a cousin to “The Mess Inside.” Both “The Mess Inside” and “Source Decay” wander over geography and use distance and memory to explore what it means to be in one place and think about another one. But we really must leave that there and talk about the Jenny that lives in “Jenny” and a handful of other songs to consider “Source Decay.”

I don’t know if this is a common opinion or not, but I think “Source Decay” is the best song on All Hail West Texas and it’s a personal favorite of mine across the catalog. I love the guitar and I love the delivery, especially how it thuds satisfyingly on lines like “walk the floors a little while.” I strongly recommend the cover by Holy Sons on the official covers album, which gives it a swampy, slower vibe.

The person sending the postcards is Jenny, John Darnielle has said, but also it doesn’t matter. “Source Decay” may be the ultimate example of why this whole exercise is complicated. John Darnielle answered a question on his blog about this song and said that exploring exactly what’s happening and exactly what the narrative tells us is impossible. He says that life doesn’t have one clean line and the exercise of looking through postcards for patterns is the point, not finding what the tapestry says. Jenny’s sending postcards here just like she’s calling or picking someone up on a motorcycle in other songs, but she’s still just part of what’s happening. You can consider the story of “Source Decay” forever, but what you should try to explore is how the events make you feel.

269. Distant Stations

Alex Russell All Hail West Texas , , , , , , ,

We’re asked to consider a rock really, really deeply, but also why we’re considering it, in “Distant Stations.”

Track: “Distant Stations”
Album: All Hail West Texas (2002)

“Distant Stations” opens with seven lines about the narrator finding a rock. “It was a triangle with soft, rounded edges,” they tell us, and add that “it was darker than English moss.” The description goes into extreme detail. You really do not need to know this much about this rock, but you do need to understand why this person feels like this information is critical. This is a certain sort of person, you see, and they need you to hear about this triangle rock they found.

This kind of obsessive behavior could be viewed a few different ways, but it seems like it’s a way into how this person views the world. In the second verse, John Darnielle sings possibly the longest line in any of his songs with “I threw a rock at a crow who was playing in the mulch of some rose bushes by the motel office.” It’s deliberately too long and it’s uncomfortable both to sing and to hear. The result is a small tension that the narrator seems to feel about their situation. They’re wandering around a motel and throwing rocks at birds. It’s anti-social behavior and it’s not something that someone does when they’re deeply in love or satisfied.

Abstracted from “Distant Stations” this sounds like a strange story. Within the song, these are just the choices this person makes as they live a solitary life. John Darnielle says it’s about inaction and about what someone does if they have the mind of a stalker but can’t or won’t act on their fractured way of relating to people. The narrator says “I never told you where I was,” which drives home that they are waiting on someone who won’t, but also can’t, show up.